Protagonist-Centered Morality as seen in Comic Books.
- Brilliantly subverted in Supreme Power. Mark Milton, Superman Expy, escapes the control of the US Government after it is revealed that he was kidnapped as a baby and intensely brainwashed his entire life to act as a walking bomb in the service of the United States. Government officials try to talk him out of it, claiming his revolt is ridiculous and he should put "insignificant things" like this behind him and get on with his work. When Mark talks to Stan, his only friend, he drops this gem "I would like to see a man arrested for murder on trial and his lawyer saying "Yes, Your Honor, my client really did kill all those innocent people! But so what? He's moved on with his life, can't we do the same?"
- Catwoman's Marvel counterpart Black Cat receives this a lot. Initially a villain, Black Cat eventually transitioned into being a Karmic Thief, and while Spider-Man was bothered by this aspect of her life, he never bothered to turn her in because of their complicated relationship. This gets turned on its head and deconstructed in Superior Spider Man: Otto Octavius, who has none of Peter's history or personal bias towards Black Cat, brutally turns her over to the authorities.
- Archie LeBrock of Grandville apparently only cares what happens to you if he's personally well-acquainted with you. So, while he might lose a lot of sleep and become a nervous wreck over the death of Sarah, whom he slept with and was protecting, he doesn't shed a tear over the fact that he gets lots of other people killed indirectly (sometimes just by talking to them), besides the horrifically brutal tortures and murders he inflicts on both goon squads and innocent policemen alike. Strangely, the only person he personally calls "evil" he actually seems to respect and speak to almost affectionately in a "Why did it have to be like this?" fashion as she dies.
- Newspaper Comic Minimum Security has a really bad case of this. Either you're with Kranti and killing 99% of humanity is the ONLY way to save the earth or you're just a poser who does ineffective things like recycling and peacefully protesting (everyone knows that riots get headlines! Or free trips to secret detention camps), or you're The Man and actively trying to destroy the planet and oppress people.
- In Neozoic, the Protagonist Lillin, an extremely competent dinosaur killer, captured (sorry, "saved") a little girl and smuggled her into fort Monanti in explicit disregard of the Laws- and by this she managed to cause the fall of the city by a horde of dinosaurs and a conquering force, the death of thousands, the foundation of a proto-mind slavery ring, the murder of her sister at the hands of a Dinosaur and the crippling of her Mentor. When everyone finds out about her deeds... she is lauded as the savior of the city because she managed to kill the Leader of the conquering force. Apparently if you retake a city and kill the bad guy all the consequences of your actions are forgiven no matter how horrific they may be.
- Played for Laughs by Sam & Max. They may or may not get the job done, and they may or may not use ethically questionable methods to do so, but they're the title characters, so whatever they do is just fine. This carries over into the video games as well.
- Strange Adventures (2020) thoroughly deconstructs this idea as part of its plot — Adam Strange is generally known as a wholesome, pulpy space hero who fights off alien hordes in the name of his beloved planet, but characters in-universe begin to directly challenge whether or not his acts against the Pykkt invaders in the name of Rann were war crimes. The series takes time to contrast the nature of stories biased towards the victorious "heroes" against the objective narratives shared by others around them, and why the degree that one would lie about past actions isn't rooted in a simple matter of good vs. evil.
- Spider-Man: Superior Spider Man has this towards the titular character. Otto steals the body and identity of Spider-Man in order to escape punishment, murders people while operating as the hero, and engages in a relationship with two women, one of whom being long time love interest Mary Jane Watson, which borders on sexual assault, but none of this is ever brought up in order to condemn the character, and instead the entire narrative is devoted to Otto's supposed "Redemption." The rationale being that Otto did good things as Spider-Man, and is a good man deep down, which ignores the fact that the story itself shows that the only reason Otto continued to fight crime was to continue his cover and to overshadow Peter's legacy as Spider-Man.
- Once & Future: Not for the modern protagonists but Bridgette notes that King Arthur is often remembered as the hero-king who united the Britons and beat back the foreign invaders. People often forget that he went to war with a European empire and crushed it. Once King Arthur rises from his crypt, the first thing he does is slaughter the English nationalists who resurrected him for being Anglo-Saxons before declaring that he's reclaiming Briton for the Britons.
- Wanted deconstructs this in a rather interesting way. The protagonist Wesley Gibson starts out as an almost comically gutless, whiny loser before he is introduced into the world of supervillains. As part of his Took a Level in Badass act, he instead becomes a sadistic, depraved mass-murdering monster through an inversion of The Hero's Journey-type of story arc, while the reader is forced to side with him due to the Villain Protagonist perspective and Evil Versus Evil morality. In reality Wesley's enemies are barely worse than him, and the comic ends with Wesley becoming one of the five supervillain overlords of the planet, his journey to power, wealth and evil completed. Any readers who at this point were still rooting for the guy as an Anti-Hero badass despite his depravities are soon reminded how bad he is when he turns to the reader, calls them out on supporting him, and then rapes you. Don't forget, he's the villain.
- Batman: The way Batman treats Catwoman in comparison to how he deals with every other thief in Gotham. While a lot of people think of Catwoman as primarily being an Anti-Hero, the fact is that there are many stories where Catwoman is out for herself. But even when she's not helping him, Batman usually doesn't seem too concerned with catching her. And the people Catwoman steals from? Well, apparently they don't matter. We're meant to feel that he does it because he sees the potential for good in her—but it's impossible to not feel that he wouldn't be so lenient with her if he didn't have the hots for her. He does have his limits, though. In DC Rebirth, he captures Catwoman and turns her over to the police after she kills 237 members of a terrorist cell that had bombed the orphanage she grew up in. He's clearly not happy about it, but says she left him no choice this time. However, it is revealed that Catwoman, as in Selina Kyle, actually took the blame for her protege, Holly, who killed all the members of said terrorist cell. This is revealed when Bruce and Selina track her down; she has been hiding with Talia.
- X-Men:
- Wolverine in general, concerning his rivalry with Cyclops. Initially he was a rebel who often got himself into trouble and had to learn to respect Cyclops' leadership, but as fans of his got promoted into being his writers, his problems with Cyke grew to the point where he's shunned him and took leadership of the 'real' X-Men team. We're supposed to take Wolverine's side in their arguments, given he usually gets the last word in and he is seen as 'the good guy', despite him instigating most of their arguments, and that had they gone with his idea everything would have been screwed. In Schism, when Cyclops argues they stand and fight while he wants to run away to protect the younger students, he starts a physical fight that wastes time until the Sentinel is there, and he continues the fight while also fighting off the Sentinel, before eventually going with Cyclops' plan, which ends up being the right call. He splits the X-Men, and again we're supposed to agree with him. In Avengers vs. X-Men, the spiritual follow-up, the entire incident could have been avoided had he not bad-mouthed Cyclops to Captain America, and later he suggests the idea of killing Hope Summers (you know, the girl who can repopulate his race?!) to end the Phoenix threat, which later turns out to have been a terrible idea that nobody else supported. Despite that, he ends up on the side of angels while Cyclops is arrested for terrorism.
- This hit its peak when, during the Battle of the Atom crossover, Wolverine calls out Cyke for killing Charles Xavier. Never mind that Cyke was possessed by a cosmic force and killed Xavier in self defense – Wolverine kills all the time! Cyclops calls him out on the hypocrisy, pointing out that Cyclops has killed one person, while Wolverine has killed many. How does Wolverine respond? "You killed the only one that matters." That is a direct quote. Note that at the time, Northstar was on his team, a character who, a few years ago, Wolverine had killed while brainwashed, essentially the same circumstances that Cyclops was under when he killed Xavier. No one points this out, not even Northstar himself.
- A better rationalisation for this was presented in one of the A+X team-up books that followed Avengers vs X-Men, when Cyclops and Wolverine were reluctantly forced to work together. Afterwards, Wolverine explained his main problem was not so much what Cyclops did (though he definitely had a problem with that), but that he felt Cyclops was refusing to take responsibility for it - which at least makes some degree of sense.
- The way the X-Men respond to anyone who attempts to cure mutants smacks heavily of this trope. The X-Men, by and large, are all incredibly good looking (except for Beast and Nightcrawler - though he's still generally drawn as a male version of a Cute Monster Girl) and have powers that are mostly cool and easy to control (Cyclops and Rogue being the two obvious exceptions). Anyone who ever tries to find a way to cure mutants is 100% always a villain who needs to be stopped. There really isn't any consideration for the mutants who got the shit-end of the Superpower Lottery and ended up with something like perpetual flatulence or being really ugly and therefore would benefit from a way to live a normal human life.
- This stance is notably averted in the Cure storyline in Astonishing X-Men. The team are fairly evenly split on whether the cure is inherently bad, or a potential help for those less fortunate than themselves, but they all agree that their enemies will try to weaponise the cure against them. The cure's creator, Dr Kavita Rao, is an unambiguously good character, and later ends up joining the X-Men's science team.
- Wolverine in general, concerning his rivalry with Cyclops. Initially he was a rebel who often got himself into trouble and had to learn to respect Cyclops' leadership, but as fans of his got promoted into being his writers, his problems with Cyke grew to the point where he's shunned him and took leadership of the 'real' X-Men team. We're supposed to take Wolverine's side in their arguments, given he usually gets the last word in and he is seen as 'the good guy', despite him instigating most of their arguments, and that had they gone with his idea everything would have been screwed. In Schism, when Cyclops argues they stand and fight while he wants to run away to protect the younger students, he starts a physical fight that wastes time until the Sentinel is there, and he continues the fight while also fighting off the Sentinel, before eventually going with Cyclops' plan, which ends up being the right call. He splits the X-Men, and again we're supposed to agree with him. In Avengers vs. X-Men, the spiritual follow-up, the entire incident could have been avoided had he not bad-mouthed Cyclops to Captain America, and later he suggests the idea of killing Hope Summers (you know, the girl who can repopulate his race?!) to end the Phoenix threat, which later turns out to have been a terrible idea that nobody else supported. Despite that, he ends up on the side of angels while Cyclops is arrested for terrorism.
